Personal Religion in Egypt Before Christianity (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By William Matthew Flinders Petrie

This 1909 work by the father of modern Egyptology begins by tracing theories of consciousness and religion, and applying them to Egyptian documents dating back to 500 B.C. The author examines what the ancients believed about the world, the gods, and how to live. He covers their organizations, dwellings, and marriage customs as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Aug 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411462311

Book preview

PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT BEFORE CHRISTIANITY

W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

122 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

ISBN: 978-1-4114-6231-1

PREFACE

THE Personal Religion here dealt with is that which concerns private beliefs, rather than public acts, and which stands apart from Ceremonialism, and Religion as belonging to the State. The documents considered have to be viewed entire, and therefore some collateral subjects naturally come within our scope, such as creation and the nature of divinity. But yet such were anciently matters of individual belief rather than of general dogma.

The material here worked over is all published already; but it had not yet received the historical study which it required to place it in its true connection. The new results which justify this restatement of the documents are: (1) the earlier dating of the Hermetic writings, which lie between 500 and 200 B.C., instead of being some centuries later as hitherto supposed. (2) The consequent tracing out of a gradual development of beliefs and terms which place the documents in their relative order of growth. (3) The historical precision of the life of Apollonios, as an evidence of its genuineness.

Some hesitation may be felt in taking the differences between documents as evidences of different age. But first it should be noted that we do not trust to mere silence or omissions of terms, but that the active use of the same word—such as Logos—in different senses, is the criterion followed. Nor can it well be that such was due to different contemporary schools, as the Hermetic writings are closely connected by style, structure, and ideas. Nor can the differences be due to esoteric and exoteric writing for different degrees, as the divine sense of Logos would not be profaned by a false sense being taught to the lower grades of learners. We have to bridge the gap between Logos as the reason of all men and animals in early writing, and Logos as Divine in later works. To place the intermediate writings in the order of development of this, and of various other terms and ideas, is the only right course until some other modifying reason may be proved.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I. OUR VIEW OF THE MIND

II. THE NATURE OF THE RELIGIOUS MIND

III. THE DATEABLE HERMETIC WRITINGS

IV. THE ASCETICS

V. THE UNDATED HERMETIC WRITINGS

VI. PLUTARCH'S ANALYSIS OF RELIGION

VII. APOLLONIOS, OR THE REVIVALIST

VIII. SUMMARY

CHAPTER I

OUR VIEW OF THE MIND

THE religious literature of the centuries immediately before the establishment of Christianity is a region of thought far too little known in general. The documents, though accessible to scholars, are not familiar to the ordinary reader like the other historical material of that time. This is partly due to their more recent discovery, partly to the difficulty of following their ideas and phraseology, partly to a feeling that they bear an unholy resemblance to the accepted scriptures and must be worthless imitations of such, and partly because the whole spirit of these documents is repellent to the modern idea of exact statement of ascertained facts. Each of these reasons is true of one or other of the religious works of that age, and the whole class has suffered a practical oblivion. Yet as the writers are clearly earlier than the apostolic age, their works are among those most needful for an understanding of the modes of thought of that time; further, in the wider view of the history of religion, no period is more worthy of study than that of the rise of spreading systems of thought, seen in Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Isiism, and Christianity. Even here the interest does not pause, for one of the most remarkable subjects is the mass of variations of Christianity, its interminable sects and heresies which resulted from the spread of a new gospel over all the existing schools of thought and belief, incorporating more or less of all that went before it. In so vast a subject, some kind of classified outline which can serve as key to the scope of it, is much wanted.

Before taking a general view, it is needful to understand what we are to look at, and how to distinguish the parts of the scene and their relation to each other. If we were to study the chemistry or the astronomy of ancient times in Egypt or elsewhere, it would be useless to begin without some scientific knowledge of the subject from a modern point of view. We must know the principal elements and their reactions before we could make any sense of ancient recipes on alchemy, we must understand the real motions of the planets before we can study ancient astronomy or astrology. Similarly it is needful to understand the nature of religious thought and its manifestations, and the principles of mental action, before we can rightly grasp or interpret the maze of theo-cosmosophical ideas and practices which embodied religious thought in the past. Without some preparation for such a subject the modern mind will either turn from it in disgust as tedious word-spinning, or blindly accept it as a beautiful mystery. Fortunately the serious work of analysis of the religious mind has been lately done, in a thorough but reverent and sympathetic manner, by Professor W. James in his Gifford Lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience. In that we have a textbook of the subject by a trained psychologist, who can disentangle the confusion of motive and feeling, and deal with each mental condition with insight and analysis. Such a work needs careful study, and we propose in the next chapter to give a summary of its system as the basis for our review of the various religious writings that we are to consider.

But before starting on this subject of Religious Experience it is necessary to try to acquire some definite ideas about the mind, and to limit our subject to certain issues. Misconceptions are likely to be presupposed which would prevent the matter being understood as it is here written, and would impart entirely wrong premises into the discussions that follow. We need to fence off certain grounds of consideration, and empty our minds of all reference to questions that are not necessarily in view. The individual mind is too generally in a chaos of beliefs and half-beliefs, which each have their own domain, and are not allowed to logically interfere with each other; such a condition is probably inevitable in the attempt to grasp by human thought the vast subject of being, which is quite incommensurate with it. So very little can be understood at all, that it is hopeless to trace the boundaries between each of the great and contradictory elements that we clumsily try to harmonize in our dogmatic elaborations. A whole system is the most hopeless end to contemplate; all that we can do is to try to see some portions less mistily than before, and to hold to some definite line of attack and analysis.

In the first place, we must rule out of the discussion here the reality of Volition. It is, of course, open to arid philosophical argument whether every action and thought is not a pure automatism, resultant inevitably and fatalistically from pre-existing states, just as it is equally open to such discussion whether there is anything outside of one phantasmagorial mind—whether that of the speaker or of the hearer is never stated. But every human mind in all time has acted on the reality of Volition, and it is even visible to us in the action of the minds of two animals one on the other. The most fanatical materialist does not practically hesitate to attribute moral wrong where it may be painfully obvious to his own feelings. When we once accept that man can act on nature, by selecting the direction of natural forces—which is all he ever can do—we accept mind interfering with the fortuitous nature of things. When such a gigantic conception is inevitable from experience, it is a minor difficulty whether such mind can exist apart from matter, or whether any forms of it can so exist in what we call a spiritual state. We need not stumble at difficulties of Theism or Superhumanism, when the far greater initial difficulty of conceiving Volition is forced through by the inexorable closure of experience.

Accepting here then the fact of Volition, we must leave aside its nature as being outside of the questions which we are here studying. Our business here is not the inexplicable, but the tracing out some portion of the material processes by which the mind may act, so that we may discern its mechanism. These are successive portions of the subject, the bases of each of which are wholly inexplicable. (1) Life itself, with or without perceptible volition—animal or vegetable. Within this, but further inexplicable, is (2) Partition of life, and growth. Within it also is (3) Volition and the nature of mind, and its possibility of action on matter. Where subjects are so closely united, there is a probability that the conditions of one will be organically applicable to the other; or, if not radically on the same lines, that at least so strong an analogy will exist between them that one will serve as a type or explanation of the other. Now we can see clearly some physical conditions of life apart from mind, and we are therefore encouraged to apply those to the more complex manifestation of mind based upon life. We may thus hope to understand better the mechanism of mind, without attempting to deal with the entirely inexplicable nature of volition or spirit.

Among the mechanical conditions that we may see in life we can trace that (1) Processes are mainly unconscious, and are only touched by consciousness in the borderland of volition, while still less are they under the actual control of volition. The whole of the internal functions of the body are carried on entirely unconsciously, and it is only where they come in touch with the external world that we have any control.

(2) All functional action is performed by two opposing mechanisms of excitation and inhibition. Recent physiological work has been largely occupied with tracing these opposing mechanisms; and one of the strangest failures of action—that in tetanus—is shown to be due to exchange of control of the mechanisms.

(3) All natural form and function is hereditable, and is determined in different portions of it by different hereditary sources. It is a universal observation how a child will resemble one parent or ancestor in one feature, and other ancestors in others.

Now let us transfer these mechanical conditions to the mechanism of the mind, and see how far they serve to explain that; remembering that as they condition the life in general, so probably the same mechanical conditions are those through which the mind is compelled to act.

(1) Processes of mind are mainly unconscious, and volition is almost the limit of consciousness. As Dr. James says: Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different (p. 388). "The subconscious self is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity. . . . Apart from all religious considerations, there is actually and literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of. The exploration of the transmarginal field has hardly yet been seriously undertaken" (p. 511). The unconsciousness of the great majority of living processes would make us bold to go much further than these statements, and to say that it is only those processes of mind that bring us into contact with the world around, which are conscious and subject to will; and that the great majority of mental process is unconscious, and merges down to the mere control of physiological action throughout the body.

(2) All mental action is performed by two opposing mechanisms. As Dr. James says: "Our moral and practical attitude, at any given time, is always a resultant of two sets of forces within us,